YOU GUISE! My neon yellow Cambridge Satchel bag is HERE! It's REAL. And IT'S SPECTACULAR.
YES, I spotted a couple at Fashion Week, which was around the same time Lucky's Cambridge Satchel piece landed in my inbox. Sadly, those two things combined are all it took for me to deliberate for less than the time it takes for Rachel Zoe to deny food and purchase a neon yellow one.
I had my first name ghost embossed onto the front. (I don't LOVE how
that looks, because I'm not that into the kerning, but at least it's subtle -- ALSO, shame on anyone who succeeds in stealing this, because
you KNOW their name ain't Tamar.)
My Cambridge Satchel was a little over $200 (would've been less without the embossing, but I figured if I'm spending 2 Benjies on it, it might as well come with my name on it), which is a
fairly small price to pay for an "it bag" or whatever. (You can get green and pink satchels at J. Crew). And honestly,
IDGAF about "it bags," and I didn't want it because it's an "it bag." I
just wanted "this bag," you know? Plus, hi, it's handmade to spec, and it took just a little over a month.
OH, and, the best part, IT SMELLS SOOOOOOOOOO leathery! In the good way.
I made three people at work smell it, and they all agreed.
OVERALL, my findings as one who coveted a neon Cambridge Satchel and then pulled the trigger: TOTALLY WORTH IT! OH YEAH, as for the naysayers who are all "OMFG NEON BAGS ARE TOO BRIGHT AND HURT MY EYES"? That's your problem, bro. Not mine.
Let me clarify! I wasn't like Orson Wells-drunk. I was more like a two-glasses-of-wine-and-I'm-feelin'-fine situation that guided my hand, which clicked "BUY" and purchased these Dollhouse ankle booties. Would I have bought them if I'd had two glasses of water, or just a Coke Zero, instead? Probably not, but I'm glad I did! Seriously, been fielding "where'd you get those" queries all day. I didn't previously own a pair of brocade booties with a black leather toe and blue suede details. Especially not ones with a 4 1/2 inch heel. And now I do! And they were just $33 with free shipping. That's like one pair of cute ankle boots for the price of three glasses of wine!
Oh, PS, I wore them with a GREAT Ann Taylor nautical striped blouse with gold sequin epaulets and black skinny jeans.
Coach's Spring 2012 forecast: fun, whimsical designs that prove that classic doesn't have to be safe. "I would just NEVAH do a white bag"? You thought that, right? But check out this white woven/ whipstitched carryall. THAT'S how you do an everyday white bag without looking like you belong to a yacht club or you're smuggling Easter eggs. It's all in the texture and hardware. Oh, you're into that terrific teal? Good, because that makes two of us. And those nude patent peep-toe stilettos are exactly what to wear with navy, orange, and every neon ever.
Don't think. Just put on the red, white and blue Coach hi-top sneaker.
Gareth Pugh for MAC's collection images are HERE, you guys! I'm most looking forward to the three polishes and the berry "Fervent" and nude "Restrict" lipsticks.
They're not out until November 23 in the US. Until then, BOW DOWN to these photos. Those false lashes? FRESH TO DEATH.
You guys. I don't know. I don't know why. I don't know how. I don't know what possessed me. I think it was the guilt of shallowly, sadly coveting not my neighbor's wife's designer shoes. Her Miu Miu glitter booties. Specifically her glitter booties. I have anguished over my inner desires. And then I snapped. The stress holding back the trestles supporting the dam of my self-restraint broke open like so many dried out twigs ready to ignite. And I bought these Charlotte Russe Miu Miu "INSPIRED" glitter booties. The cheap, five-dollar whore version of the untouchable painted ladies. And what's worse? I BOGO'ed and got the second pair for $15.50. And what's worse than that? I used a promo code (SCREAM11) and got $5.
Can you spot the fakes? Of course you can.
Do I expect anyone to mistake my Charlotte Russe glitter booties for the real-deal Miu Mius? No, of course not. Did spending $59.99 for two knockoffs feel good? Yes, of course.
My shame knows no depth. My bottom is bottomless.
PS: Before you go pointing the finger, Steve Madden's got glitter boot knockoffs
and Topshop does too. Which doesn't, of course, make it right. I'm just rationalizing my guilt by widening my net of shame and blame.
I stopped by the Stuart Weitzman spring 2012 preview last week, and, true to the core of most Stuart Weitzman collections, the walls were lined with trendy but never gauche designs; daring heights, and Louboutin/ Jimmy Choo-style stilettos at, well, Stuart Weitzman prices. Aspirational but still basically attainable. (I say that realizing that most of us, certainly myself included, are firmly entrenched within "the 99%.")
But... back to the pretty things. My favorites of the Stuart Weitzman spring 2012 line-up was the super-duper Deco patent part of the collection. If you can think of a more satisfying effect than a cool, after-dinner mint color paired with a metallic, by all means, the comments are open.
This horse fashioned out of a ginger's hair, from an Esquire mag piece, is easily the best thing I've seen all day. Hat tip to Beauty Blogging Junkie, via LaughingSquid, via Brock Davis, etc, etc, the Internet is just one big recursive loop k hole.
Oh man oh man oh man. Oh boy. Oh dear. Oh shit. Diane Von Furstenberg's silk HEART-print "Naples" pants are so perfect that they're probably gonna give me a HEART attack.
Aside from a few highly uncomfortable, confusing days of Seattle-like humidity (SO BAD FOR MY HAIR, Y'ALL!!), it's ALMOST sweater weather here in New York! Since most of my sweaters have horses or cats on them -- there's a time and place for that, of course, but it's definitely not all the time nor is it any place -- I realized it's time to step up my sweater game. Fortunately, the nice folks at Lands End Canvas sent me their Striped Button-Back Sweater in orange. I don't have very strict criteria when it comes to sweaters (usually my main criteria involved... cats and horses), but this sweater is so perfect that's it now become the prototype, to cite Outkast. I'm wearing the medium, and it's a perfect fit -- roomy, but not in a Grandpa's Sweater kind of way. And it's thick and snuggly and perfectly soft without a single annoyingly itchy fiber. Not. Even. One.
Because I always stand in my own doorway with my hand on my waist! CHEERS!
I can't. I just CANNOT. Rodarte For Opening Ceremony's booties are just THAT intense. This is why we still need fainting couches at the READY! They're makin' me high. Toni Braxton-style. And those glitter booties? Now that I've come to terms with the fact that I'll probably just never own a pair of Miu Miu glitter booties, I'm quite happy to see that there are other options out there for glitter footwear enthusiasts such as myself. Oh, and hat tip to Racked.com's 28 best shoe stores in New York City story, where I first spotted these Rodarte glitter booties and to Eye4Style, who sent me Lefanciulle's guide to making your OWN glitter ankle boots. Something tells me my attempt to DIY my own may come out looking more like a kindergartener's trace-your-hand turkey art project, but it's worth a try.
I just got the Tucker Spring 2012 lookbook, and you KNOW a line is doing something right when you want to rub your cheek up against a PDF because the pieces just look THAT soft.
If you can think of a natural or human-made fabric that feels better against your skin than silk does (chenille doesn't count because it usually looks gross), and if you can think of a brand that does silk better than Tucker does, please inform me of both at once. (Okay, Celine and Diane Von Furstenberg are pros, true). But no one does a louche luxe lifestyle like Tucker By Gaby Basora.
Polka dot contrasts with a chain-link belt? WHERE do I sign up?
Silky rust-colored pants and a green print pullover with heels? EXCELLENT silhouette.
SO many things going on here in the world at Camp FashionBinge! A zillion people INCLUDING KANYE WEST are occupying Wall Street and using all of the available bathrooms! They discovered glowing cats that could help fight AIDS. I shot a year-end video series for VH1, which was quite fun. (Sadly, none of the Basketball Wives were there). I had the teeeeensiest quote in the New York Times. Small, true, but it was enough to make my hyperbolic Jewish mother call everyone she knows back in Cleveland and tell them I just got a new job as the editor-in-chief of the New York Times. (YOU DIDN'T HEAR?) And, I recently dipped a painted toe in the milk of Tumblr, to paraphrase something that Elvis Costello hardly said and barely meant.
My new Tumblr is called AddictedToAccessories.Tumblr.com. As one might correctly glean, it's a Tumblr completely devoted to my magpie-like fixation with jewelry. Expensive's not always better, but bigger is almost decidedly best.
To celebrate the launch of AddictedToAccessories, I've teamed up with Ippolita jewelry -- they make everything from timeless diamond pieces like this gold and diamond bracelet (FashionBinge bucket list!) to more affordable, more modern pieces like their excellent Hard Gloss resin collection -- to give away a very AddictedToAccessories-leaning bangle.
God BLESS Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Not only was their brain juice potent enough to come up with idea to sell a $39,000 crocodile skin backpack THAT ACTUALLY SOLD OUT, but they've also gone and created the most perfect t-shirts of all time, anywhere, ever via their StyleMint collection.
StyleMint was kind enough to send me a credit for a tee -- in case you haven't been schooled, StyleMint is Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's monthly t-shirt subscription site. Every month they create a small selection of tees, each of which sells for the insanely reasonable price of $29.99 per shirt. You can take a little style test (fun!), and every month you get a cute little curated selection of tshirts selected based on your style preferences. Like, maybe you're a bit of a Marilyn, perhaps you're kind of a Charlotte or more of a Hermione or possibly a little Alexa. There's a t-shirt for that! You can either sign up for a monthly credit, which entitles you to any tee at any time, you can bank your credits and get a million tees, or you can buy a la carte (which is what I prefer, but that's just me). All StyleMint t-shirts are available in limited supply.
I opted for the navy blue "Rush" top with cream-colored polka dots. It's a "shark bite" style cut, which usually annoys me, but instead it created the most epic billowy, drapey situation. It was totally slouchy, not schlumpy, which is a very important distinction.
You guys. I'm a simple woman with simple needs: quite simply, I need a LOT of shoes. Fortunately, I don't have expensive taste in shoes. They just have to be cute and possibly even a little absurd. As you can imagine, this has manifested itself in a problem that enjoys overwhelming volume but an alarming lack of consistency: since I rarely spend over $100 on a pair of shoes (a lot of my shoes are barely $50), I've amassed a huge shoe collection that makes about as much sense as your typical Lady Gaga video -- fun to look at it, but let's not kid ourselves. Like the "Born This Way" video, if you looked at my entire shoe collection, you'd leave like "well, that was kinda cool to look at for a few minutes but... I don't get it. Which is how I found myself in my living room tonight, surrounded by the four pairs of totally dissimilar shoes featured above.
Let's go from left to right.
1.) ASOS Superstar Tapestry Heels ($78.57): Dudes. These are FLORAL TAPESTRY heels with A GOLD STUDDED TOE. It's the mullet of shoes. Party in the toe... business in the back? Eh? Anyway, they're increds. Except I DO call bullshit since they were on sale when I bought them and now they're mysteriously not on sale. Ahhhh capitalism, you crazy scoundrel you!
2.) Jeffrey Campbell Downtown booties (no longer available): I bought these on a trip to Need Supply when I was visiting my sister in Richmond last year. Real quick: hat tip to Need Supply. They're like an indie Urban Outfitters, except they don't steal people's designs. Anyway, they were on sale for $49 from $130. That's called usin' your noodle. OH, and they're SO comfortable. I walked about a MILE out of my way lost en route to a VH1 taping yesterday, so I learned this the hard way. (The hard way that comes from not giving a shit about reading maps!) Seriously, these shoes are like crack. Or Pinkberry. Straight men fall out of their cubicles to ask me about them. My only regret is not buying the orange ones when I had the chance. Man, hindsight. She's such the little fucker!
3.) Matisse Nugent booties ($193) : The nice people who do Matisse's PR reached out and sent me these, and the second I opened the box and took in the holy sight that is their Nugent bootie, this was pretty much my reaction:
Like Cup Stacking Girl, I too achieved something great! SHOE NIRVANA (shirvana?) These booties aren't just ANIMAL print. They're DALMATIAN print. (Not real dalmatians, obviously! They're IMITATION DALMATIAN. From the NATION of faux DALMATIAN.) And they're so perfectly '70s Marc Bolan shaped, which is what I really want in a bootie, you know? Intensely, almost preternaturally perfect. These booties are the Ryan Gosling of footwear. Like HOW could anything be that perfect?
Apparently of the 3 million pairs of jeans purchased in the U.S. on eBay this past year, 793,289 pairs were... buh...buh...boot... UGH I CAN'T EVEN SAY IT! BOOTCUT jeans. Maybe this is simply an eBay-only phenomenon? I haven't seen any overall stats from the Denim Council Of America (surely that exists), but if eBay is representative of America's denim-buying habits, then we've got a major problem on our hands. Or, rather on our legs. Bootcuts are bad, bad, bad baby. They make you look short (I should know!), and, worse even than that, they make you look like just emerged from a cave for the first time since 2003. Skinnies, wide-leg jeans, boyfriend jeans or JUST DON'T WEAR PANTS!
As someone who owns an alarming amount of denim, here are some of my favorite denim brands and styles:
+ My favorite skinny jeans: Hudson does skinny jeans worthy of an Oscar, if they gave Oscars for jeans. And Uniqlo's skinny jeans are amongst my favorites. Also, I was just gifted a pair of Genetic Shya skinny jeans, and they're buttery soft, stretchy and feel like they were made for my body.
+ My favorite boyfriend jeans: Current Elliott. The boyfriend of all boyfriend jeans.
